In this 12‑hour immersive episode, Sam Parr and Sean accompany entrepreneur Hayes Barnard, founder of the nonprofit charity GiveWell and a self‑described “anti‑routine” billionaire, through a full day at his Tahoe lake property. The episode opens with Hayes questioning his own stress and anxiety, then moves into his signature morning ritual: a 5 am cold‑lake swim combined with a daily breathwork practice he calls “the Barnacle.” Throughout the day the hosts discuss personal balance, the pressure of being a work‑aholic, and Hayes’s philosophy of doing something new every day to avoid rut‑forming habits. After the lake session they transition to a live webinar for Hayes’s portfolio company Beehive, showcasing his hands‑on approach to entrepreneurship. The trio then tours a historic casino‑turned‑hotel that Hayes is renovating, illustrating his belief in manifestation and bold real‑estate bets. The episode concludes with a playful pickleball match, casual banter, and promises of future collaborations. The narrative blends informal vlog‑style footage, candid interviews, and actionable insights into wellness, mindset, and business experimentation.
Chapters
I'm like, wow, why am I so stressed out all the time? Why am I anxious about this?
This is Hayes Barnard. Most of the time you see guys like this on the COVID of Forbes magazine. You see, Hayes has got an incredible story. He flunked out of the first grade and is now one of the wealthiest people in the world. But what I love about Hayes, he thinks big and he plays big. I'm Sean, and I want to take you Behind the Pod.
Should we show up early? Should we show up early in a real power move? Like he gets there and we're already in the water. People have no idea what to do with that. Hayes has invited us down here. We just wanted to do a podcast, then he said, no, no, come out here, live a day in my life. I want you to wake up 5 in the morning, meet me at the lake, freezing cold water. He's got apparently a crazy breathwork routine. He does this every day. I do— I'm willing to do this one day today. He does this every single day. I think that's The difference between me and a billionaire.
As we drove over to his house, I started feeling weirdly anxious. You know, I've done like 500 of these episodes, but for some reason it's different to just do them remotely, see a little face on a screen versus actually go to their house and see what they're really like. But I wanted to do it because I have this feeling that I'm just doing the same things with the same people all the time. Our routines can become ruts, as Hayes says. So today I wanted to break my frame. I wanted to go sample a day in the life of someone that I really admire. And even more pressure, we decided to film it. I'm not a vlogger, I've never done this before, but I wanted to take you with me so you could see this firsthand just the way I did.
What's up, man? You good? Yeah, I'm good. You guys good? All right, let's do it.
This is gonna be super fun, man. I do this every morning. There's a different friend that comes over every morning to join me.
Nice.
It's just a great way to start the day, so I'm super grateful you guys are here.
I did some breathwork with him one morning and it was really weird.
It made me very uncomfortable. And then I was like, I'll try the second day.
But third day, I was like, I feel really amazing.
I feel great about my life. This is incredible. So now I do it and it makes a big difference.
I don't have a name for it.
I have one for you.
Oh, you do? The Barnacle.
So is there something—
I'm curious, like, when you do this today, I'm thinking about this right now for myself. I haven't thought about it, but is there something that you want to get out of it? Like, is there something you're really focused on in business or family?
There's two things that are top of mind for me. One is the kind of like life career stuff. So basically hit this point where kind of did everything I wanted to do for the things I wanted to do 10 years ago. What I don't want to do is just continue doing those things due to lack of imagination. So we're trying to kind of imagine, all right, what would the next 5, 7 years be like that would more like tap into my potential? What I can do.
What's the thing you want out of this session? Like, what are you thinking about, man?
I, I'm trying to really think through the balance of my life right now. I don't have a ton of balance from a time perspective, just pulled in a lot of directions where Sometimes I don't feel like I'm a good enough friend. I don't think I'm a good enough dad. I don't think I'm a good enough husband. I'm not a good enough CEO. Understanding that there's a balance between various times, types of happiness. And I'm trying to show people like, look, take time for yourself.
Space. Space is okay.
When you're a workaholic like me and you grind all the time and you're like addicted to success, you're addicted to productivity, it's hard to just take a moment and watch the sunrise and drop in. And so I'm forcing myself to say it's okay, like, take space. Like, it's okay, man. Like, it's good for you. This is your opportunity to kind of just think. We all have our little demons, you know, that little devil on our shoulder that says I'm not enough.
I don't think I've ever watched a sunrise, by the way.
Is this your first one?
My wife probably wanted it to be her, but—
Yeah, it makes you realize how special every day is, man.
All right, well, you in for 12 minutes, 20 minutes? Like, talk to me.
Say play full out, so let's do the full session.
What do you think, guys? Did you drop in? I'm seeing colors I haven't seen before. Okay, ready? 1, 2, 3, let's go, Big Dog! Good morning, good morning! Let's go! Ah, this is, ah, that's pleasurable. This is not pain. No, I don't know if it's the breathwork. It's the breathwork.
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah, your body's awake.
I feel like my body was primed.
Yeah, you totally— you're, you're, you're whole. All your blood's in your, in your chest and you're, you're just—
dude, I'm like literally relaxed right now.
Yeah, that's a very— so this is the deepest this part of the lake, it's around 2,000 feet deep.
You know, Huberman's done a bunch of studies about the power of horizontal light.
Oh really, what does that mean? Oh yeah, it's like amazing for your circadian rhythm. You wanna watch the sunrise and you wanna watch the sunset because it's really great for your happy factor. Huh. It's really great for your brain. I love this view that you're about to get in this lake with the horizontal light shooting through. The water at us. It's almost like you're in space. So on the count of 3, we're gonna go down. Ready? Hold your breath as long as you can and just open your eyes. Look at each other. Open your eyes, man. 1, 2, 3.
Forgot to breathe.
I forgot to breathe before I went down. Oh man, so good.
Sean, how you feeling? Amazing.
What were you saying yesterday? Don't start the day with 2 coffees. Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is how you start the day. Yeah, this is it, you know.
I never drink coffee.
People stimulate themselves. It's all this caffeine, all this sugar. Your, your body is used to these patterns, these rhythms, these rituals and recipes, right? Yeah. And so you get into these rhythms that become ruts. And so one of the things that I've learned is try to do something every single day that you've never done before. Then you remember the day, you mark the day. You're like, "Oh yeah, that day I did that crazy thing," you know? So what could we do that could be like different? 'Cause I've done this before. All right, we'll zip around the corner. There's these rocks around the corner and they just look fun. It's almost like an adult jungle gym. All right, so we're jumping back in.
Jumping back in.
Jumping back in. We're gonna do something we've never done before. All right, so here are these rocks. You guys see these rocks right here? And so we're gonna do something we've never done before. Why not, right? Today's the day. We gotta make it happen.
Dude, what a life-changing attitude. Every day I'm gonna do something I've never done before. Just find one moment.
Oh man, come on dude, we're living! We're living right now, man. That was amazing. How you feeling? Oh, so good. It's like I feel so alive.
That's tough. How you feeling?
Amazing. A week.
Not bad for a Wednesday.
Yeah.
We wanted to bring out here something. Oh wow, what, what?
We took your speech.
Oh my God, that was amazing. Oh man, we wanted to get it framed up for you, picture with your mom at the bottom.
So, oh man, that was awesome.
Oh dude, you guys are amazing. Thank you so much. Geez, that's incredible. Give me a hug, man. That's so cool that you guys did that. You guys are so thoughtful. Wow, wow, wow, wow, man.
Whoa.
So I think—
no, that's living in the other room.
Yeah.
And then, uh, damn, when you're building the thing, sometimes you get so caught up building the thing that you forget to look back and look at the— crazy stuff.
So that's crazy, man.
A reminder of all the good—
oh wow, where did you find all this stuff?
Uh, pod done. You never really know how a podcast went until like 2 days later. Yeah, you got to think about what do you remember 2 days later. If you don't remember anything 2 days later, it's not a very good pod. But For this, I think I'll have at least 4 or 5 big ideas that I'll remember 2 days later. So now we go feast. How did you feel swimming?
Honestly, unbelievable.
I was like, man, this is amazing, but we are done, right? Yeah, he's like, this feels so good that I almost feel like we could just stop here on this rock.
I thought we were just supposed to chill, man. Dude, I was telling you yesterday how my worst fear is dislocating both of them at the same time. And I was like, oh my God, this would be the worst possible place for that to happen.
After hanging with Hayes, we had to head back to the house to do a webinar for one of our portfolio companies, Beehive. I don't normally do webinars, but sometimes you got to do what you got to do.
Live and interactive. Let's go. Ed Rhee, you have a great name and a great character. You should be in Hollywood. What are you doing here?
Rub the lamp. I popped out.
You're like, what the hell? The genie's Indian? And you're like, yeah, I don't do public math, but 5% of 10,000 is not that many people. To get to your app. So the first question is, if you got something like—
After we wrapped up the webinar, we headed back to meet up with Hayes. He wanted to give us a tour of the proper hotel he's building in Tahoe. And the story is that Hayes was in the lake doing his morning routine and he saw the building and decided, one day I'm gonna buy that hotel and rebuild it into something great. I don't know if I believe in manifestation, but shoot, here we are. He's given us a tour of that hotel, rebuilding it into telling us some really fun stories.
So this was the first licensed casino in the entire United States, and we had one slot machine that we kept running for many, many years just to keep the casino license. Yeah. And so we're not going to do a lot of slots. It's going to be more like, you know, poker games and some of the card games and things like that. Maybe Uno? Are you guys going to have Uno? Yeah, Uno. We'll probably have Uno. Yeah. Power Hungry Pets, you know. Exploding kittens, those types of things, right?
Yeah.
Time to play some pickleball, the real reason why we came out here.
All right, let's get a 1 to 10. Hayes, what would you rate yourself?
I'm like a 7.5.
That's a downplaying 8. He already told us off the record he's a 9. Cameras come on, he becomes humble. Hayes, all right, we know how it is.
Come on, man, come on.
I played pickleball 3 times in my life, maybe, but I am a natural born athlete, peak Indian genetics. That you're about to see in action. You thought we were good at math. Pickleball has a component of math.
Diego, come in here. Oh, safe stuff, Diego! 5-8. Got to load the bounce right here. 1-4.
10-8. 1-4. All right, man.
What a day. Thank you.
Appreciate you hanging.
Great hanging.
When you're in Austin, you later.
Thank you.
I'll bring you some pork ribs. Good job, partner. Have fun. We got a win in there. Yeah, we did.
There we go.
Okay guys, I'll bring you some pork ribs next time. Yeah, work out again.
